Lit. “to have a scythe with”. Most Poles associate this phrase with football (soccer) hooligans. This is where it has its origin in early 90s. It has spread into many other areas and became more or less understandable to general <45 Polish speakers but is still far away from its high register.
Lit. “a forbidden mug” – when talking about someone’s face of course. Poles use this phrase mentioning someone definitely looking like an alcoholic, a bum or a criminal.
Lit. “to make the The Autumn of the Middle Ages of one’s ass”. I’m pretty sure this steps directly from the Polish translation of Marsellus Wallace’s line in Pulp Fiction: “I’m gonna git Medieval on your ass.” promising the rapist Zed a long and painful death. I think what happened is the people translating the movie, while lacking a matching set phrase in Polish, coined a new expression containing both the middle ages and the ass which turned out to be a brilliant idea and caught on among Polish movie (and middle ages) enthusiasts in the mid-90s.
The new invention sounds funny while retaining the seriousness of someone getting a severe punching.
Lit. “your own mother won’t recognize you”. The expression is used to openly threat someone with a beating so hard to change his/her appearance entirely. If you ever hear this then you can consider the situation quite serious and whoever mentions that your open enemy. Either get ready to fight or call the police.
Lit. “it’s the blacksmith who’s guilty, but they hung the Gypsy”. You use this expression to point at an injustice and suggest that a person or an institution with more power (social, financial or political) got away with their wrongdoing while another actor with much less influence took the blame and was punished.
The source of this saying is obviously with an important role wealthy smiths have played in rural Poland while travelling Roma traditionally being outcasts and blamed for whatever crime happened while they were around.
